A Slice Of Americana Sits In Charles City

Resident Turns Home Into Own Private Museum

CHARLES CITY (COUNTY) — William Cropper gathered the pieces of Charles City County history for his private museum, which is simply his house, from the rubble of the last county museum.

"They were just throwing the stuff away. I just had a notion I ought to take the door," says Cropper, 71, who hung the old door at the entrance to his basement. "Nobody else wanted it."

He saved a lot from the old museum, which had been housed in the old county jail. The posts supporting his cellar are from the jail, and he has the rusted window - with four iron bars missing - that some juveniles sawed through to escape in 1929. His house, called Kittiewan, is filled from floor to ceiling with artifacts, historical prints and books. Many objects are carefully labeled with typed information cards and resting in glass cases salvaged from stores.

Confederate money displays sit next to a plastic fruit centerpiece. Brown Coca-Cola bottles from 1912 sit next to a six-pack of Harley-Davidson Heavy Beer from 1988. Nineteenth-century daguerreotypes, which are photographs made onto plates of chemically treated metal, sit next to a "War Battles" comic book and a desktop statue of Franklin Delano Roosevelt steering the ship of state.

Cropper has a 1911 photo of his wife's uncle after he bought the first license plate in Charles City County - and he has the license plate. There are 19th-century Charles City election ballots, an 1817 report card from the Greenway Grammar School and a list of the customers of the Charles City Telephone Co. in 1922 - when calling the courthouse required a long ring, a short ring and another long ring.

"It's Americana, as I call it. Anything of any interest," he says. "It's junk, really. You know, one man's junk is another man's treasure."

Cropper's collection also has an 1822 notebook inventory of slave clothing and photos of ex-slaves. Cropper says his house is not dedicated to preserving "white history" or "black history." Just history.

"You can't erase history," he says. "You'd do better to just try to improve from now on. But the past is past."

But the past, with its reminders of slavery and the repression of blacks, is a sensitive subject in Charles City, which has the largest percentage of non-whites, 71.3 percent, of any Virginia county. Charles City's privately-held historical plantations are well-preserved, but there has been no public collection of county history since the 1950s.

That's when the county's 1867 jail served as Charles City's museum. But the museum closed, and the jail, a symbol of ugly memories for many black residents, was destroyed in 1972 by the county's new black-majority government.

"The first thing they did was tear the jail down and burn the records, six barrels full," Cropper says. "These are pieces of paper I picked up around there. The rest of it is lost. They're more interested in other things, I guess."

Richard Bowman, who was one of the supervisors elected in 1972, praised the old county museum that was once in the old jail, but he says the frame building had to go.

"It was decrepit. Termites had eaten away at the wood. It was beyond repair," he says.

Cropper believes most Charles City residents have little interest in county history, but Bowman would like to see an official county museum. He suggests placing it in one of the school buildings vacated this summer when the district moves into a new $16.7 million complex, or placed in the courthouse, which dates to the 1730s.

"I'd like to see a museum in the courthouse. There has been talk of trying to develop the courthouse for that purpose," he says. "They also had plans to renovate the middle school into an administration building, and maybe there would be some room left over."

For now, Cropper's crowded house will have to serve. He is one of the best-known amateur historians in the county. A woman from Syracuse, N.Y., heard of him and sent him a 1793 Charles City legal document.

"She said she didn't know where her dad got it, but I think some of her people had picked it up, stole it and took it with them," Cropper says, noting that Union troops occupied Charles City several times during the Civil War. "Somebody probably just put it in his pocket."

The document, and everything else, is on display, but the audience is often just Cropper.

"I like to keep refining the displays," Cropper says. "I'm saving it for posterity, if they'll have it."

* William Cropper's home-turned-museum of Americana is open by appointment only. Call him at 829-2100 to schedule a visit and get directions to his house.